Founder Of Cydia On ‘Competition vs. Community’

Jailbreak king and the man behind Cydia, Jay Freeman, had taken to the web to post a lengthy diatribe about a variety of things ranging from the monetization of Cydia to his own motivations to actually do the work on Cydia in the first place.

The topics covered are many and varied, but one particular point will prove interesting to many or, at least, it should.

Speaking of his motivation to work on Cydia and the associated jailbreak tools that he creates, Freeman – alter ego, Saurik – goes on to say that competition in the place doesn’t actually spur him on to continue his work, or improve the product. Instead, he says that completion is more likely to make him throw in the towel than roll up his sleeves and dig deep.

With all this background, we now can hopefully understand what my response is to competition: I am not "motivated", and in fact I tend to get stressed out and avoid the project in question; I instead work on other things that seem happier, and fall back on "obligation" and "pride" to keep the project maintained.

Furthermore, Freeman then goes on to all-but threaten this working on competing products, saying that it could result in him walking away. If you rely on something he makes, then don’t compete against something else that had his name on it.

While there is no doubt that Freeman’s work in the jailbreak community is almost second to none, the tone of the post comes across as egotistical and, it pains us to say it, paranoid. Competition is traditionally the thing that pushes us all to do better. To improve our own stuff for fear of customers and users going elsewhere. It’s not a new concept.

I always then feel like I have to ask people who see jailbreaking as an "opportunity to better monetize what that saurik chump won’t": are you actually prepared to handle the situation where I get fed up and leave? Do you rely on my software? Are you relying indirectly on the people who in turn rely on me, or my friends?

Threatening to take your ball and go home because jailbreaking is showing signs of growing bigger than one man?

Reading such a statement from a man who’s done so much for the jailbreak community is disappointing to me personally, it perhaps is a sign that jailbreaking will forever take one step forward and two steps back.